The Greenway opened in 2008. There may not be a park anywhere else in the world that has the Greenway’s storied history behind it. There is certainly not a park in the world that has its price tag.

The Greenway sits atop what was the most expensive public works project in U.S. history. The Big Dig burrowed a three mile tunnel underground ($1 billion per mile), depressing the despised Central Artery and relocating it underneath Boston’s downtown after three decades of having served as a scar through the downtown.

Boston residents lived through nearly twenty years of construction, inconvenience, noise, dust, and disruption. They paid more literally as well: the final taxpayer tally for the Big Dig will be north of $20 billion.

Enjoy, and use it well.

It can be debated whether or not the new highway underneath the city has solved the traffic problems that the now-gone Central Artery plagued Boston with. (Aside from aesthetics, the results are varied)

What cannot be debated is that the new parkland and open space that now sits on top of the highway is a vast improvement. In fact, that is easily the most common comment about the Greenway -- "It sure beats what was there!"

It sure does.

I grew up with the Central Artery like everyone else in Boston. I covered the Big Dig for fifteen years, in all its trials and triumphs. I also covered and followed with keen interest the evolution of what would replace it on the surface. And what’s there now beats what was there.

But frankly, a single blade of grass and a park bench would beat what was there.

The fact remains, over the entire period of the Big Dig project, the Greenway was seen as the public’s crowning payoff for twenty years of sacrifice. “It sure beats what was there” cannot forever be the low bar by which Boston’s most significant public space is judged.

So, five years into its existence, what do I think of the Greenway?

I like it. More importantly, so does Boston and its visitors. Visits to the Greenway have steadily increased each summer since it opened. Where once a hulking, hideous Berlin Wall of steel snaked its way through the city, cleaving downtown from the waterfront, a twisting, turning mile and a half of green space now winds its way from Chinatown to the North End.

Just north of Dewey Square, lush green grass invites people to wander in off the hardtop and stroll through walkways dotted with planted flowers, bushes, and benches on which to sit, and savor for a moment.

At the waterfront section of the Greenway, fountains spray in whimsically-timed jets, while children run through and around them in delight.

Just further north, Hanover and Salem Streets now spill out not hard up against the highway, but out onto a rolling lawn with water and sloping trellises, under which sit cafe tables and chairs.

From north to south, and all along the edges of the Greenway, restaurants and other commercial properties are gradually opening up the ends of their buildings that abut it, reorienting themselves to an area they once took pains to shut out and block off.

Like four-wheeled harbingers of improvement, food trucks also ring the edges of the Greenway, offering lunchtime visitors a variety of offerings with which to sit outside and enjoy an al fresco meal where once it would have been unthinkable.

And this fall, a new and permanent carousel will open on the Greenway opposite the Aquarium.

Not only that, a new pavilion nearby helps direct visitors to Boston’s Harbor Islands, which now have become more accessible themselves thanks the artery’s disappearance, the Greenway, and a city being reunited with its waterfront.

Is it paradise on the Greenway? Is it perfect? No.

Some of the built structures that once were proposed have not materialized. A garden-under-glass and a skating rink -- not to mention something simpler like the popular indoor café at Post Office Square -- would have helped continue to draw people to the greenway during cold weather months when the green is gone.

In summer, from end to end, there is still not enough shade. Those parcels where the underground highway’s ramps feed out to now feel violated and undefined, like uninviting pieces that have broken off the parkland and are more related to traffic than trees.

And the parcel 9 proposal for a Boston Museum is a project that should have been approved. Period. It would have been a major positive for the Greenway. Big mistake.

But…

The Greenway grows and thrives. The Greenway Conservancy, the non-profit responsible for the park’s upkeep, is working hard in challenging economic times to nurture it along. And it shows.

Two years ago, on an earlier visit, I asked then-Greenway Conservancy Director Nancy Brennan if she thought the Greenway was more finished, or more “still becoming.”

“Still becoming,” she said. “But it is also becoming part of the ‘mental map’ of the city for Bostonians. It’s a good park now—we want it to be great.”

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